Reference Notes
M o n tg o m e r y C it y - C o u n ty P u b li c L ib r a r y
February 2017
The B-29 in History
"So long as there are
men there will be wars." Albert Einstein
Very few could argue
against war having a profound impact on society
and the power to evoke
immense change. Everything that has happened
in the last seventy-one
years has been affected by
one day in 1945. On that
day an airplane delivered
this instrument of change.
The airplane was a B29 “Superfortress,” and
the instrument was a uranium-based nuclear weapon, “Little Boy,” and the
day was August 6, 1945.
The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki set the
tone for global politics for
the next forty-six years.
The B-29 first saw life
as the XB-29, a set of two
flyable prototypes in August 1940. The moniker B29 coming from its official
military designation which
superseceded Boeings official name “Superfortress”.
Both parts of its name
reflected its predecessor
Volume 1, Issue 2
the B-17 “Flying Fortress”. The B-29 had
one of the shortest development periods in
aerospace history which
was four years. Its successors, B-52 & B-2
took six and eight years
of development, respectively.
near southern Japan and
in minutes it would be
part of history. For that
moment it was just a
plane on a mission. Before August 6, 1945, a
number of B-29’s flew
missions over Japan
mostly dropping tons of
firm bombs on its cities.
The development of
the “Superfortress” was
accelerated and in
many cases, updates
and upgrades were
made just days after a
plane rolled off the
assembly line. This project was simply known
as the “Battle of Kansas”. Through a trial
and error process; problems with overheating
engines, pressure seals,
and a computerized fire
control system were
resolved. The B-29’s
were ready for flight by
1944 and would be
used against the Japanese.
Shortly after the B29’s entrance into the
war, dozens of them were
loaned to Great Britain
and other allies. They
were used as part of a
misinformation campaign by disguising their
range. After the war, they
would be used in support of the new “Cold
War”.
At 8:00 a.m. (JST), a
B-29 “Superfortress”
flew through the skies
Supplying allies was
done through the U.S.
Lend Lease Act, which
supplied our allies with
low-cost/no-cost equipment and materials. In
regards to the B-29’s,
because of growing mistrust, Russia was not supplied with them.
In response, the
(Continued on Page 2)
Inside this issue:
Pg.
The B-29 in History
1-2
The B-29 in History
Pathfinder
2
Col. Paul W. Tibbets, Jr., pilot of
the ENOLA GAY
LITTLE BOY being loaded in to
the ENOLA GAY
LaRuth Martin & Suzanne
Horton, Editors
The B-29 In History (Continued from Page 1)
Russian’s approached the problem
with a little ingenuity. During the
course of the war in Europe Russia
was bound by the Soviet–Japanese
Neutrality Pact. This allowed them
to seize equipment used against Japan if it entered their borders. During 1944 several B-29’s made emergency landings in Russian territory.
The Russians stripped one plan
down, then used equipment off of a
crashed B-29 and reversed engineered the parts. Using others as
standing models and training on a
third the Russian’s developed a B29 clone known as the Tu-4.
This new war would be a war of
expanding nuclear arsenals and
based on ideological conflict. This
was the Cold War which was con-
ducted in secret, in far off lands,
under our oceans, and in space.
After the war, the B-29 would be
used in support of the new “Cold
War”.
Consulted Sources
The Cold War began on the day
that the B-29 flew and a device was
dropped. The explosive result was
fifty years of proxy wars in places
like Korea, Vietnam, and Afghanistan. The “Superfortress” used was
the “Enola Gay” and it dropped
one of the only two atomic weapons
ever used in war. As the dust
cleared on that day and the days
that followed a war ended and a
new one began. Because after all,
man’s indulgence for war never
changes!

http://www.boeing.com/news/frontiers/
archive/2003/November/
mainfeature.html

Donald, David. Bombers of World War II.
New York: Friedman/Fairfax, 1998.

“B-29s Over Korea.” Air Power History 47,
no. 2:26. Military & Government Collection, 2000. EBSCOhost (accessed November 17, 2016).

Baggott, J. E. “Hycocentre.” In the First
War of Physics: The Secret History of the
Atom Bomb, 1939-1949. New York: Military
Press, 1983.

Nakazawa, Keiji. Barefoot Gen: a Cartoon
Story of Hiroshima. San Francisco: Last
Gasp, 2004.

Einstein, Albert, Alice Calaprice, and Albert Einstein. The New Quotable Einstein.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
2005.

Lend Lease Bill, dated January 10, 1941.
Records of the U.S. House of Representatives, HR 77A-D13, Record Group 233,
National Archives.
The B-29 In History Pathfinder
Local Offerings:
Ambrose, Hugh. The Pacific. New
York: New American Library, 2010.
Smith, Larry. Iwo Jima: World War II
Veterans Remember the Greatest Battle
of the Pacific. New York: W. W. Norton, 2008.
Pike, Francis. Hirohito’s War: The
Pacific War, 1941—1945. London:
Bloomsbury Academic, an Imprint
of Bloomsbury Publishing PLC,
2015.
Maddox, Robert James. Hiroshima in
History: The Myths of Revisionism.
Columbia: University of Missouri
Press, 2007.
Southard, Susan. Nagasaki: Life after
Nuclear War. NY, NY: Viking, 2015.
Page 2
Steinberg, Rafael. World War II:
Return to the Philippines. Alexandria,
VA: Time-Life Books, 1979.
Library Databases:
"Paul Tibbets, Jr." Gale Biography
in Context. Detroit: Gale, 2008. N.
page. Biography in Context. Web.
21 Nov. 2016.
Online Resources:
History:
http://www.history.com/topics/
cold-war/berlin-airlift
FDR Presidential Library:
http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/
archives/collections/franklin/
In Print Nonfiction:
Turner, Henry Ashby. The Two Germanies Since 1945: East and West,
Yale University Press, 1987.
Kakehashi, Kumiko. Letters from Iwo
Jima: The Japanese Eyewitness Stories
That Inspired Clint Eastwood's Film.
London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson,
2007.
Tzouliadis, Tim. The Forsaken: An
American Tragedy in Stalin's Russia.
New York: Penguin Books, 2009.
Bradley, James, and Ron Powers. Flags of Our Fathers. New York:
Bantam Books, 2001.
Article and Pathfinder written by Alan Davis,
Librarian II, Juliette Hampton Morgan Memorial Library
Reference Notes